


Confession

by as_with_a_sunbeam



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: 1797, Adultery, Angst, F/M, The Reynolds Pamphlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-12 07:39:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10485708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/as_with_a_sunbeam/pseuds/as_with_a_sunbeam
Summary: Hamilton finishes the Reynolds Pamphlet and now faces the impossible task of telling Eliza. Their love for each other is unshakable, but even love can't fix everything.





	1. Alexander

The portmanteau strains Hamilton’s arm as he lifts it off the back of the stage coach. It’s no heavier than usual, he knows, only a few changes of clothes and a hundred or so pages, less documents than he typically carries on a trip away from home. No, it’s not the physical weight that’s bothering him. His life’s happiness rests in that case, waiting to be destroyed.

The whole house is glowing with warmth as he approaches home. Did the windows always emanate such a heavenly light, or can he only see it now that it’s about to disappear? He spent the whole trip imagining the next few hours. Eliza angry, crying, throwing things, sitting silently. Every possible scenario has played out in his head.

 _She can’t take the children_ , a despicable corner of his mind whispers. Divorces weren’t common, but they were granted, especially in cases where a spouse openly admitted to adultery. But even with the as-of-yet unpublished pamphlet and the scandal that was sure to follow, no judge would take custody away from him. Eliza might wish she could leave him, but she would never leave the children. 

 _Mama did_ , a different, childish, insecure part of his mind whispers. His mother had fled from Johann Levine, leaving behind an infant son, his half- brother Peter. She never saw him again. Hamilton never laid eyes on him until he arrived back on the island from South Carolina to collect the money from Mama’s estate. If Mama left a child behind, might Eliza do the same? Was he no better than the ogre Levine?

 _You could let her go_. This new voice sounds more like Laurens than him, so much so he let out an involuntary whimper.  He could just let her take the children and leave. That was the gentlemanly thing—the right thing—to do. Eliza might even let him visit them. He squeezes his eyes shut tighter against the image of saying goodbye to his precious babies.

His stomach flips at the thoughts and he is forced to duck into the alleyway.

The brick wall of the building feels rough and cool under his palm as he braces himself against it in the dark alley. His other palm presses against his lips as he lets out a shaky breath. He belches, moves his hand away from his mouth and leans forward, the rough brick scratching against his soft palm as he presses harder against the wall. Nothing comes up. He presses the back of his hand against his mouth this time as he straightens.

He pushes away from the wall and reaches down to grab the leather strap of his portmanteau, which he’d dropped in his haste to expel the meager contents of his stomach. Heaving the bag over his shoulder, he steps shakily back onto the street. Hopefully none of the passers- by had heard him vomiting. He was humiliated and disgusted enough without an audience.

He stares at his house again. He can hear laughter inside. He feels dirty. He’s disgusted with himself. Physically disgusted. He hasn’t slept since he finished the cursed pamphlet. His head aches, his eyes burn, and his stomach churns. How could he have done this? Cheating on his perfect wife, paying blackmail money to the degenerate scum Reynolds, getting caught—by the United States Congress, no less. He was pathetic. Loathsome. Slime.

He braces himself before opening the front door. Just tell her, the decent part of his brain insists. Own up to it like a man. Don’t let her kiss you, touch you, don’t even let her smile at you. Just tell her. He nods to himself. This, at least, he will do right. He won’t let her rejoice in his homecoming. She should be as disgusted as he is right now.

He opens to door to another chorus of laughter. The portmanteau falls heavily onto the floor. Angelica’s face pokes out from the sitting room.

“Alexander! You’re home!” His sister-in-law exclaims. John Church follows her out, then Eliza, all smiling.  

Oh God, he can’t do this. He can’t tell her with her sister here. She’d be humiliated. _Coward_ , Laurens’ voice sneers in his head. _What will publishing that pamphlet do?_ He squeezes his eyes shut. 

“Sweetheart?” Eliza says softly. She sounds worried.

“I…I…” Just tell her, his mind insists. Get it over with. Eliza looks at him with her warm black eyes, love and concern glittering in their depths. He’s a coward. “I’m afraid I’m not very well.”

“Oh, darling,” Eliza sighs. She glides towards him, with none of the distinctive waddle he’d seen in countless heavily pregnant women. His perfect, beautiful, amazing wife.

“Those stagecoaches really are hellish,” Angelica adds. “All that bumping and jostling. How anyone keeps their stomach is a wonder to me.”

Eliza places her hand on his forehead to feel for fever. “You don’t feel warm,” she says after moving her hand down to his cheek. “Is it just from being bumped around, or something more?”

He stares into the inky black pools of her eyes and hates himself.

“Honey?” she prompts when he doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t know,” he whispers.

Eliza smiles weakly at him and nods. “All right. Let’s get you to bed. I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning.”

John adds encouragingly, “Yes, get some rest, old thing. A good sleep in your own bed will put everything to rights.”

How he wishes that were true. He apologizes to his in-laws and collects the portmanteau once more, the light leather heavier than a bag full of bricks.

“Shall I carry that for you, my love?” Eliza offers when she sees him struggling.

He feels bile rising in the back of his throat. He shakes his head swiftly. “No, no. I can do it. I…I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself. The baby….”

Eliza smiles at him again. He can’t get upstairs fast enough.

Eliza doesn’t join him right away, staying to see her family off, he supposes. He can’t believe he didn’t tell her. There wasn’t much more time. She would find out from the papers if he didn’t tell her soon.

He readies for bed in a haze. He’s just pulling on his nightshirt when the bedroom door opens. Eliza steps inside and closes the door with a soft click.

“Angelica and John just left. I tried to tell them seeing you immediately when you stepped through the door from Philadelphia was a bad idea, but they insisted they wanted to welcome you home. I’m sorry if they were a bother,” she says as she steps up behind him and rubs her hands over his shoulders.

“No, it was fine. Just…my stomach….” he lies vaguely, and kicks himself. His stomach? Her sister was gone. What excuse was there now for not coming clean?

“Would you like some chamomile tea?”

He shakes his head as he turns to face her.

 “I could rub your back for you,” Eliza offers, her lips quirking into a seductive little smirk. Nine months pregnant and still sexy, he marvels. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” he tells her, his voice a touch hoarse with emotion.

Her brow furrows lightly as she looks up at him. She seems to consider her next words carefully, leaning in to embrace him before speaking. Her hard belly presses against him, their newest child noticeably active in the womb. He wraps his arms around her gently, then moves one hand to the side of her belly to soothe the infant within.

“Sweetheart,” she begins, squeezing him gently, “If you say you’re feeling unwell, of course I believe you. But you seem…well, you seem more upset than ill. You know you can always talk to me if something is bothering you, right?”

He freezes, his lungs forgetting how to draw air.

“Is it money? Something with politics?” she guesses.

He eases her away and looks her in the eye. She looks at him with such love and concern that he has to look away. He shakes his head, then leads her to the armchair by the fireplace. He kneels before her.

“There is something you need to know. Something I should have told you a long time ago,” he begins. She nods and reaches out to take his hand. He pulls away and swallows down the hard lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. “You won’t want to hold my hand.”

He launches into the speech he’d prepared on the ride back, the words pouring out of him. Meeting Maria, the blackmail, the meeting with the three Congressmen, the newspaper stories, damnable Monroe, the pamphlet, everything. Every secret he’s ever kept from her.

When he looks back at her, the light in her eyes has dimmed and her face is as unreadable as a stone sculpture.

“Eliza?” he asks softly, hardly daring to breath as he waits for her reaction.

She’s looking at the carpet. “Did you love her?” she asks.

“No,” he answers immediately. “No. Pride and vanity made me flatter myself that she had such feelings for me, but I did not love her.”

Her eyes meet his, cold now, and she bites out, “Then why?”

He shrugs helplessly.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath and says in a deadly quiet voice, “Get out.”

He stays still, looking up at her.

“Alexander, I can’t…I can’t even look at you right now. Just leave.”

He nods, staggers to his feet, and leaves the room.


	2. Eliza

Eliza braces her hand on her back as she straightens. She looks around the bedroom, checking to make sure she has everything. A sloop is due to set off for Albany in a few hours’ time, and she means to be on it.

She’d seen the flicker of anxiety in her husband’s face when she told him, his eyes going to her very pregnant stomach. He hadn’t argued, though, merely asked if she’d like him to see her off. “No,” she’d snapped. He’d flinched as if she’d slapped him.

“Do you need anything else, Mrs. Hamilton?” Mary asks softly.

She manages a smile for the servant girl. Although she had no notion of what was going on between her master and mistress, the girl had been attentive and helpful for the past day. “No, thank you, Mary. Just take this downstairs and have one of the men put it in the coach.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

Alone now, she glances around her bedroom, nearly empty of her possessions, and feels a tear slide down her cheek. She quickly rubs it away and forces herself to take a deep breath. It isn’t as if she’d never had reason to suspect, she scolds herself.

The thing is, Hamilton had never been a very good liar.

That night in Philadelphia, nearly six years ago now, she’d been packing for her trip up to Albany. Hamilton came home late from a mysterious errand, took a bath, and went straight to bed. When she’d followed him soon after, she tried to kiss him good night and he shied away from her. He’d never done that before. “I have a headache,” he grunted and rolled over to face away from her.

The kiss she received before leaving the next morning was hasty and cold. He barely looked at her. When the carriage set off, any free time not spent wrangling her children was spent wracking her brain  for some reason he would be angry with her. Had she forgotten something important? An anniversary or birthday? Had she said something wrong? Embarrassed him in some way? She couldn’t think of a thing.

He didn’t write at all those first several weeks. Not a line. She alternated between being angry with him and being sick with worry. Was he ill or injured? He’d never gone this long without writing, not even when he’d been away with the army. Finally, she’d determined to go back to Philadelphia, and she’d written to tell him so.

At last, one of his letters arrived.

He said all the right things, that he missed her and loved her and wished she was home. He was making the great sacrifice of being away from her for the sake of her health, and the children’s. Don’t hurry back on his account, was his constant refrain as his letters slowly began to trickle in. Something about those letters had seemed different, though, false and forced. She tried to tell herself she was imagining it. But she ended up tucking them away in a drawer and never reading them again.

He hadn’t met them in New York as he usually did, nor in Elizabethtown as he’d later planned. He told her his kidney was paining him, that the jostling of the stagecoach would be too painful. She started to worry again.

Home at last, relief swept over her when she saw him sitting in the parlor. He stood and greeted the children enthusiastically. Hugs and kisses abounded. When he fought his way out of the wriggling pile of babies atop of him, he came to her.

“Betsey,” he said, voice soft. His arms went around her and he kissed her deeply.

She put her arms around his neck. “I was so worried about you,” she told him as she held him to her. He rubbed her back and squeezed tightly.

“You shouldn’t have. I was fine.”

Things seemed better. Whatever had been bothering him when she’d left seemed to have disappeared. She felt lighter, happier, all day. Until she saw him readying for bed. There were scratches down his back. Light ones, she doubted he even felt them. She recognized them well, had seen them there many times before. But she’d always been the one to leave them.

That night, she’d been the one to turn away and feign a headache.

She rose before him the next morning and took a cup of tea into the empty parlor. She tried to consider the issue practically. Alexander had told her honestly on their wedding night that he wasn’t a virgin. She’d be lying to say the thought had never occurred to her that he might bed a tavern girl or a whore when he was away on business. She told herself that his working out a purely animal passion had nothing to do with his feelings for her. Having evidence to confirm the idea shouldn’t really change anything. It would stop now that she was home, she consoled herself.

She stayed quiet.

And if she afterwards noticed love marks on him that she didn’t remember making, she stayed quiet about that, too. It was easier to convince herself that she was mistaken, than to upend her whole life by asking that terrible question. Eventually, months later, the marks stopped. He became more attentive. The late night errands came to an end.

She would have gone on staying quiet forever, pretending it had been a horrible nightmare from which she’d finally woken. Until he came in to tell her everything- how he’d met the young woman; how he'd brought her into their bed; how he’d gone to see her for months after Eliza came home; how he’d paid blackmail money to try to keep a truth she’d already known from her. And then, worst of all, how he planned to tell the whole world.

What was worth this? Worth humiliating her in front of the entire country?

She’d asked if he loved the girl. Her heart would have broken in two, but at least she might have understood why he did this. She doesn’t understand.

Eliza makes her way downstairs. The door to her husband’s office is closed, she notices. Spitefully, she considers leaving without saying anything to him. She wants to hurt him, wants to make him feels as betrayed and wounded as she does. She is trembling as she walks to the door.

She pushes it open without knocking, caring nothing for his privacy. He is sitting in an armchair, gazing at an unremarkable point on the wall. She closes the door with a snap, the noise finally prompting him to look at her.

“You could not ask for a better wife,” she states, fighting to keep her voice even. “No one could love you more than I do. No one could be more devoted. I thought you knew that. But you seem to have thrown it away without the least bit of thought. You’ve made my love for you feel naïve and foolish. And I hate you for that.”

He meets her eyes. “I know,” he says simply. She notices suddenly that he is trembling, too. He swallows. “You…you can take the children. I won’t fight you. I’ll give you a divorce.  Take the children with you to Albany, and you’ll need never see me again.”

He speaks in a rush, his voice breaking. She sees tears gathering in his eyes. He looks up at her with wide wet eyes, like a frightened little boy.

She knows what the offer must have cost him. He is a devoted, doting father. The idea of taking the children away from him makes her feel ill. She wants to hurt him, but not like this. To take the children would break him.

She shakes her head once. He makes a noise, a combination of whimper and sob, a tear spilling out of his left eye and sliding down his cheek. He bites his lip and wipes hastily at his face to remove moisture.

“Why?” she asks plaintively. Her voice is trembling. “Why did you do this?”

“I’m sorry, Eliza. I’m so, so sorry.”

She keeps her gaze steady on him. That isn’t an answer. She needs to understand.

“Please, Alexander. Just talk to me. Tell me why.”

“I…I felt…different when I was with her. Like a character in a play,” he says at last, voice so quiet she has to lean in to hear. “All the pressure, the constant stress, even at home. She was a fantasy, an escape. Everything felt so easy at first. And then it wasn’t.  It all went wrong so quickly, and I didn’t know how to get out of it. Reynolds kept threatening me, saying he was going to tell you, to kill me. I was terrified he’d come to our house armed and in a rage. What if he hurt you? Or the children? And I just…I didn’t know how to make it stop. I didn’t know what to do.”

Hot tears leak from her eyes again.

He drags in a long breath before adding, “You have to know…I never stopped loving you, not for an instant.”

She closes her eyes. She believes him. She believes he could do all these stupid, hurtful, loathsome things and still love her. And God help her, she loves him. The pain and the anger surge and boil within her, but they do nothing to drown out the love.

She takes a deep breath to steady herself. “I don’t think there is anything you could do that could make me stop loving you, Alexander.” A little spark of hope springs into his eyes, and she feels her heart break a little more. She wishes that loving him was enough, that she could forgive him and put this behind them. She shakes her head. “But I still need to go. I can’t… I can’t be in the same house as you right now.”

The hope is replaced with desolation. He nods.

“Mrs. Hamilton? The carriage is ready,” Mary interrupts suddenly, stepping into the foyer from outside.

Eliza thanks her and waits for her to leave before turning back to her husband. “I’ll write when the baby comes,” she promises.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

They stare at each other for a long moment. They’ve never parted for any length of time without a kiss goodbye. Neither of them seem to know what to do. At last, she turns away from him and makes her way out of the house.

She’s just stepped from the stoop when she hears him call her name. She turns to see him hurrying down the steps after her. He stops before her, staring at her helplessly. “Eliza,” he says again.

Her face crumples as she looks up at him. She reaches up, wrapping her arms around him, kissing him fiercely. Her face feels wet, but she’s not sure which of them is crying. Maybe they both are. She hates him for making her do this—forcing her give him up.

When they break apart, he looks down at her with damp, red eyes. He doesn’t bother asking her to stay. Instead, he begs, “Please be safe.”

She nods and pulls away from him.

After she manages to heave herself into the carriage, the driver starts away from the townhouse. She glances back to see him watching her leave. She forces her gaze forward once more, but can’t help the sob that rips out of her as she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interestingly, although Hamilton did write to Eliza during the affair, his letters were seriously delayed in getting to Albany. You can tell from his letters that she was getting frantic with worry. 
> 
> The fact that Eliza left for Albany at nine months pregnant after she learned about the affair always breaks my heart. You don't take that kind of risk unless you really just can't stand to be in that house anymore. Through it all, I don't think she ever stopped loving him, which really must have just made it harder. 
> 
> Well, I hope you're still enjoying. Comments and kudos always very much appreciated!


	3. Alexander

“She’ll be back,” Angelica says firmly, sitting across from him at the dinner table later that night. “She loves you.”

Alexander pushes his broccoli through his gravy to leave swirls on Angelica’s fine plate as he contemplates that statement. Angelica sounds so sure, as though it is a universal truth. The sky was blue. The earth was round. Eliza loved him.

Eliza did love him. He loved her, too. But life was more complicated than that. Love didn’t fix everything. Love didn’t overcome everything. Eliza could love him and despise him all at once. He’d watched her do it from the time he’d told her to the time she’d left him.

A servant is at his elbow suddenly, asking uncertainly if something is wrong with the food. Is it not to his taste? Would he like a plate of something else?

“No, it was excellent. I just have no appetite this evening,” he assures the girl.

“Are you unwell, Uncle Hamilton?” His niece, Kitty Church, asks him with concern apparent on her delicate features.

“No, dear. Just missing your Aunt Eliza.” He forces a smile to put her mind at ease.

“Then we must cheer you up,” Kitty nods firmly, her dark curls bouncing with the movement. “Shall I tell an amusing tale? Or perhaps I could play the harpsichord. I’ve been practicing.”

“Yes, some music,” Angelica agrees with forced gaiety. “Just the thing.”

Kitty stands from the table to prepare a song for them.

“We must get you looking less mournful, my dear Hamilton,” John says, clapping him on the back as he walks by with a full glass of brandy in hand.

“She’ll forgive you. I know my sister,” Angelica tells him softly when it’s only the two of them at the table.

He wants to believe her. But he knows his wife, too.

Eliza is kind, merciful, and everything good and pure in this world. Her love is constant and unchanging. He remembers their wedding night, when she’d voiced dissatisfaction that they had vowed only ‘til death do us part.’ “I’ll love you forever. Death can’t change that,” she’d told him so certainly that it had stolen his breath away. Even a day ago, as she was leaving, she’d told him nothing could make her stop loving him. But the way she’d looked at him after he’d confessed to his sin, with such horror and disgust on her face, had him wondering whether she’d ever be able to forgive him.

Not that he blames her.

He stays at Angelica’s long enough for his niece to perform two songs for him before he excuses himself. His niece hugs him tightly before scurrying off upstairs. Angelica simply looks at him enigmatically.

“I’m really not fit for company tonight,” he apologizes as he leaves.

He steps out into the warm night and begins the solitary walk home.

He’d expended so much time and energy trying to keep this shameful mistake from ruining his life. Maria had been an escape, as he’d told Eliza before she left. She’d helped him forget for just a little while all the political fighting, the pressure to make the new Constitution work, to keep the economy growing, to keep his family healthy and well provided. When he went into that dilapidated apartment, it all went away, as if she cast a spell and for an hour or two he became a different person.

But he wasn’t a different person in that room. He was still the Treasury Secretary. He was still Eliza’s husband. And everything he’s ever worked for in his life seems now to be lying in ruins around his feet.

He’d tried so hard to fix it. He’d paid the money Reynolds demanded. He’d tried to leave when Eliza told him she was pregnant with their fifth child, but Maria was so bewitching. He kept going back to her, breaking every oath he made to himself, as though she had some kind of supernatural power over him. Of course she didn’t, he scolds himself. It was his own perverse nature that caused the mess. Then, at last, he’d convinced the three Congressmen not to pursue the matter when Reynolds attempted to entrap him. When they left agreeing not to press the matter, when the blackmail finally stopped, he’d allowed himself to feel safe. He believed he’d escaped with his reputation and his marriage intact.

His thoughts turn to Monroe. The anger and hatred is so sudden and vehement he feels lightheaded. Red presses in on his vision. Through carelessness, or cruelty, or both, Monroe had leaked the Reynolds correspondence and single-handedly turned everything good in his life to ash. James Callender had gone on the publish the letters and to accuse Hamilton of profiting from office as Treasury Secretary, leaving him to either allow the charge to stand or to admit the truth and face the destruction of his private happiness.

When he’d confronted Monroe, he’d meant to challenge the man to a duel. Instead, he’d wound up lunging for the man, wanting to strangle him with his bare hands. John had pulled him off, attempted to calm him. As they were leaving, he’d asked Monroe whether party politics were truly a reason to ruin his entire life.

“I haven’t done anything to you, Mr. Hamilton. Whatever ruin you suffer will be of your own making,” Monroe had replied with a cavalier smugness that made Hamilton want to lunge at him again. He likely would have, had John not still held a firm grip around his bicep.

The worst part is knowing that Monroe is right. This is all his fault and he still doesn’t know how to fix it. 

He considers writing to the printer to stop the pamphlet from being published. But what good would that do in the end? He would rather posterity abhor him for a crime he’d actually committed than for those disgusting lies propagated by Callender. And keeping quiet would do nothing to fix his marriage now.

No, it’s better to be honest, he decides. Deceit and silence have gained him nothing thus far. From now on, he will be honest and faithful, he vows to himself. Eliza may never forgive him, but he will never stop striving to be a man worthy of her love.

 

**One Month Later…**

 

Eliza nursing a baby is the most beautiful sight in the world. He’s thought that many times, but it remains as true today as it was when he’d first seen her feeding Philip. She is rocking slowly and cooing a lullaby to the infant suckling at her breast when he enters the guest room. He simply stares for a long moment.

When he shifts his weight, the floorboard creaks and she looks up at him. At first, her expression is inscrutable as she stares at him. Silence reigns, until at last she smiles weakly. “Would you like to meet your son?”

He nods. He takes one step into the room and freezes, waiting, as though God will strike him dead for the impertinence of entering this sacred space. Nothing happens. He takes another step, and another, until he is standing beside his wife.

“I named him William, as we discussed,” she told him softly, looking back down at the squirming infant.

“William,” he repeats, smiling down at the baby. He runs a finger down the soft skin of the infant’s arm.

The baby spits out the nipple, little fists waving in the air as his face scrunches up. A truly startling wail erupts from the tiny being as Eliza flips him onto her shoulder for a burp. He steps back and notices for the first time how exhausted his wife looks.

“I need not ask about the health of his lungs, I suppose,” he comments. Then he kicks himself. That was hardly the romantic overture he’d rehearsed in his head every night for the past month.

Eliza seems not to notice, and gives a watery chuckle that sounds one step removed from a sob. “I have had five babies before this, not counting Fanny, nor the countless siblings, nieces, nephews and cousins I’ve cared for, and never have I seen such an obstinate, inconsolable infant.”

“Worse than Jamie?” he asks, his eyebrow raising with disbelief.

“Much worse,” Eliza tells him seriously.

A wail even louder than the last bursts forth from his son.

“Here, let me try,” he says, reaching out to take the infant from Eliza.

His hand brushes over the back of hers as she hands the baby to him, and his breath catches in his throat at her touch.

He swallows thickly and redirects his focus to his newest son. “There, now,” he coos. “Come see your Papa.”

William settles against his shoulder as though he were designed to fit there. The utter silence that follows is as jarring as the initial wail. He and Eliza stare at each other in shock.

“So that’s what you wanted, hmm?” Eliza smiles more genuinely, sitting back in the rocking chair with a contended sigh in the blessed silence. She watches him burp the baby with her head cocked sideways. “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to keep Papa close by for a while.”

She says it lightly, but something significant passes over her face. He meets her eye and nods his understanding. She hasn’t forgiven him. They aren’t all right. Not yet. But he’s being given a second chance.  She nods back, just once.

Their silent communication is broken by a monstrous burp from the infant on his shoulder. He winces, sure the back of his tailcoat is covered in baby dribble. Eliza’s contagious giggle that follows more than makes up for it, however.

As he holds his new baby and watches his wife smile before him, he has hope for the first time in a while that everything just might be all right in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to end it on a hopeful note without oversimplifying the issue. In case you don't know already, Hamilton actually did lunge at Monroe and need to be pulled off. I've always kind of loved that detail. 
> 
> Also, I seem to really love the Ham and William interaction. I like the idea of William being a Daddy's boy from the very beginning. This is like the third time I've written about them, and I have no idea why he's my favorite. Is that weird? 
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt to grapple with the hardest part of Hamilton and Eliza's relationship. Thanks for reading. Feedback very much appreciated!


End file.
